Nowadays it seems the single most important thing you hear in seminary, candidacy retreats, first call education and so forth is not “proclaim repentance of sins for the kingdom of God is at hand” but “please take care of yourself so you don’t burn out, leave the ministry, and worsen the clergy shortage problem.” Self-care is the order of the day. Pastors are givers, as a rule, suffering from a flow of compassion that leaves them internally weakened, generally producing resentful spouses and atheistic children. Take care of yourself! we are told, and then all will be well.

It is certainly true that pastors do not excel at taking care of themselves. But I strongly doubt it is from a lack of self-regard. The real issue is excessive self-regard for oneself as minister of the gospel. In short: clericalism.

Pastors in our tradition are susceptible to the conviction that it is all up to them. They are the CEOs and cheerleaders, the sole sources of good doctrine, good preaching, and good hospital care. They need to get things done because in the end, the buck stops with them—if they don’t do it, no one will. They know the charge that was laid upon them at ordination and dare not fail in carrying it through.

What is not noticed in this serious respect for a holy calling is the contempt it implies towards the ministry of the laity. We Lutherans talk a good line about the priesthood of all believers, but there is little in our practice this day that proves we really believe it. We blither about vocation, never noticing that for us it means getting young people to seminary while to Luther it meant every job except the religious ones. We don’t trust our laity, probably because we are not doing a very good job of making disciples out of them; then because we can’t trust them, we do everything ourselves… and burn out. Then the laity intuit our deep-seated contempt, and repay us with anticlericalism. And if we keep on burning out, embezzling funds, fooling around with the organist, and whining about our lack of time, who can really blame them?